


Skin & Flaws

by harpers_mirror (SapphireBryony)



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: 5x08 - The Party's Over, F/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3478415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBryony/pseuds/harpers_mirror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>you can casually stumble out of a mansion, dripping with gems and champagne and Ivy League boys</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin & Flaws

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the strap on Rory's dress constantly falling off her shoulder (no, really)

You’ve adjusted the strap of your dress at least 83 times tonight while getting ready at home. It’s ever-so-slightly too big, that dress. You knew it when you tried it on and bought it - it was just too pretty to leave on the rack and besides, Mom could take it in for you. 

(Mom could fix anything.)

You never got round to having her take a look at it.

The too-long strap keeps slipping off your shoulder.

If it weren’t for Grandma’s crazy party scheme, if this were a normal Friday night (as normal as those get in your family), you’d never notice it. 

But because you feel so out of place among these people, these soup heirs and future shipping magnates and would-be lawyers who look entirely too milquetoast to be up to the challenge of actual arguments...you notice. You feel the movement of that treacherous strap so acutely that you nervously reach for it even when you don’t feel it.

At first, your reaction is born of simple panic. _“What if Grandma sees?”_ you wonder, shoving the strap up for the hundredth time. She’d find some way to blame this on Mom, you just know it. Grandma could find a way to blame the sun going _nova_ on Mom - probably something about single-parent households or unmade beds. Or both.

As the evening wears on, you become aware of other eyes on you, less judgmental than Grandma’s but more...appraising?

You feel like an object, a commodity, a prize, and it’s _not_ a nice feeling and definitely not one you have experience with.

When Logan turns up (as he always does, bad penny personified), you still feel uncomfortable but when the damn dress slips again and again throughout the evening, you let the strap rest low on your collarbone for longer and longer, aware of his eyes on you.

(Somehow, his gaze doesn’t feel objectifying like the Campbell King and Onassis Junior’s did just an hour ago.)

The Good part of your brain protests. _"You belong to **Dean** ,"_ it reminds you. 

(But the attention is so nice and what can it hurt?)

Yet when Dean turns up (later than planned, earlier than you wanted him to, but no, you weren’t late on purpose! you weren’t even careless of the time on purpose, of course not), his gaze doesn’t go to your dress, to your legs, or even to your completely bared shoulders (because of course, the strap slipped as you ran to him, of course).

It goes to your head, to that ridiculous tiara Grandma made you wear tonight and that you had, equally ridiculously, forgotten about.

You don't argue when he says he doesn't belong and you know exactly why: because you’re wearing a fortune on your head and _you managed to forget about it._

Because you can casually stumble out of a mansion, dripping with gems and champagne and Ivy League boys and just expect him to be _okay._

Because you can no longer be his innocent little tenth-grade Rory in plaid skirts and saddle shoes, wide-eyed and wondering at the world.

Because your world isn’t his anymore and neither are you.


End file.
